Posts Tagged ‘website’

Say, thanks. | Weekly Roundup

July 16th, 2010 by Elizabeth Ricca

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Follow me on Twitter @elizabethricca or check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.

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Ducks Pick Design

July 14th, 2010 by Rebecca Hume

We at Big Duck spend a lot of our professional time thinking about websites. A lot. Whether we’re creating sites for clients, leading webinars about online strategy, or just keeping up with best practices, a good chunk of our workday brainpower is devoted to the web.

But then there are the non-work hours, when we surf and search and chat and click just like everyone else.

So we thought it might be interesting to see what we could learn from the websites we like to use on our own time. (Ahem. Not those kind of websites.) All the ducks selected sites they’ve found in their personal web use that they think are particularly well designed.The results are below, along with brief explanations why each duck made the pick he or she did.

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The P@$$w0rd is… | Weekly Roundup

July 9th, 2010 by Elizabeth Ricca

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Follow me on Twitter @elizabethricca or check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.

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First impressions | Weekly Roundup

July 2nd, 2010 by Elizabeth Ricca

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Follow me on Twitter @elizabethricca or check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.


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Oh, Facebook. | Weekly Roundup

May 21st, 2010 by Elizabeth Ricca
  • I’m tempted to just close my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears until all the madness over Facebook’s privacy policies calms down and we actually know what we’re dealing with. But if you’re more enterprising than I am and are determined to understand the tangled web of privacy settings, here’s a visualization from the New York Times that may help. Or not.
  • As Bryan Miller discusses on Giving in a Digital World, a new service called Square now makes it possible for nonprofits (or anyone really) to process credit card transactions with nothing fancier than a smartphone and a little (free) card-scanning device. It’s hip to be square!
  • It’s spring cleaning season: time to spruce up the old enewsletter. On Philanthropy Journal, Allison Van Diest poses some questions that can help you evaluate and improve the messages going out to your email list.
  • While you’re in tidying mode, how about that website? Is it quick and easy for your site visitors to find the most important content? Lacey Kruger on Connection Café offers some tips for taking a step back to assess your site’s visual hierarchy and determine whether it’s helping you achieve your objectives.
  • But before you start tweaking your website, consider these thoughts from 37signals on the art (and importance) of simplicity. It’s not easy to refrain from promoting every one of your awesome programs on the homepage, but it might just make for a more effective site.

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Follow me on Twitter @elizabethricca or check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.

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Knock knock: anyone home? | Weekly Roundup

May 7th, 2010 by Elizabeth Ricca
  • As search gets smarter, more and more of your site visitors are able to get what they need from your website without ever making a pit stop on the homepage. Make sure they don’t miss anything important (like your enewsletter signup) with these tips from Nancy Schwartz.
  • Building a new website, creating a campaign, or working on a new logo? Do your homework with some good old-fashioned user testing. It doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds—Kira Marchenese shares an example of just how simple (and effective) a little user feedback can be.
  • RSS (really simple syndication) is super useful and too often overlooked. Joanne Fritz tells her how-we-met story of RSS adoption and provides some helpful resources for getting started (or starting over, if your relationships with RSS haven’t worked out in the past).
  • A great nonprofit video starts with a great plan. Debra Askanase offers some suggestions on Idealware for ensuring your film debut is strategically on point and destined for greatness.
  • My new favorite website: www.onemilliongiraffes.com. I strongly recommend submitting a giraffe of your own. Here’s mine—some of my fellow Ducks have been making free with the dry erase markers, so he now has a pumpkin for a head. Such is the nature of community-sourced art.

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Follow me on Twitter @elizabethricca or check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.

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That’s One URL of a Pickle

March 16th, 2010 by Dan Gunderman

As you may have heard, yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the very first dot-com—Symbolics.com was number one, followed by Bbn.com and Think.com. We’re also just a few days removed from the 10th anniversary of the official dot-com bubble burst. Congratulations, dot-com. It’s been a big week for you.

Dot-org is a slightly different beast. Ten years ago, many nonprofits were still saying, “Gosh, we should really have a website.” Today, of course, a good website is just the beginning of what you need as part of your overall online communications strategy. If you bought the domain for your nonprofit anytime in the 1990s or early 2000s, you probably had no trouble getting exactly the URL you wanted in its dot-org form.

Alas, we’re getting to the point that many of the good URLs (along with all the good names perhaps) are taken. If you started a nonprofit, say, in Boston called the Coalition for Ordinary Kids’ Education, you might be surprised to learn that COKE.org redirects to coca-cola.com. Oh, those clever for-profits, gobbling up all the dot-orgs, too.

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Project Website | Weekly Roundup

February 5th, 2010 by Elizabeth Ricca
  • On Katya’s Non-profit Marketing Blog, Katya Andreson shares her list of must-have elements of a good nonprofit homepage and takes a look at a recent successful nonprofit website makeover. Ineffective websites are so last summer.
  • While we’re on the subject, how will you know when your nonprofit’s website is due for a new look? eJewish Philanthropy highlights some of the reasons it might be time for a redesign.
  • And don’t forget to accessorize: no website is complete without a great URL. If you’re venturing out into the World Wide Web for the first time or just relaunching your site, these tips from Marc Pitman at The Fundraising Coach on choosing an effective URL might come in handy.
  • It’s cold and flu season. What better time to plan for some viral fundraising? Joe Garecht shares some of the key symptoms of a successful viral campaign on A Small Change.
  • Social media is the future, and Shannon Aronin shares some reasons why on Buzzmarketing Daily. (At a panel this afternoon for social media week, Ari Wallach suggested that asking whether nonprofits should be on social media is like asking whether nonprofits should have websites back in 1995.)

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.

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Farewell, ‘09 | Weekly Roundup

December 25th, 2009 by Elizabeth Ricca

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.

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Home(page) for the holidays | Weekly Roundup

December 18th, 2009 by Elizabeth Ricca
  • Can website visitors see the donate button on your homepage without scrolling? A new tool from Google Labs shows you what percentage of website users (on average) can see any given area of your page when they open it up in their browser. (Of course, there are those who would argue that it doesn’t really matter.)
  • On Social Media Today, Angela Connor suggests making a new year’s resolution to fight online overload by opting out of email lists and communities that aren’t helpful to you anymore. Good advice, and also an important reminder to think about your nonprofit’s email strategy. If one of your subscribers were to go through her inbox ready to hit the “unsubscribe” button, would your emails be interesting, engaging, and helpful enough to survive the purge?
  • You know your organization should think about doing more in social media. But your staff is already too busy. Can’t you just bring in an expert to do the tweeting? On Social Media Explorer, Chris Garret speaks to the pros and cons of social media outsourcing. The bottom line: don’t outsource your relationships.
  • When a visitor to your site clicks on a broken link or mistypes a page address, what do they see? If it’s the standard “page not found” message that your server automatically displays, you’re missing out on a fun and easy opportunity to showcase your brand. For examples and tips on making the most of your 404 Error pages, check out Heather Gardner-Madras’s post on the Idealware blog.
  • In this season of Black Friday sales and mile-long wish lists, one nonprofit fundraising campaign invites you to take a stand against shopping: choose an item, don’t buy it, and donate the money you would have spent instead.

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.

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